Getting Around

Davy has been impressing us with his lightning speed in getting around a room or from room to room. It's not so much his crawling as it is his side-step walking around the circumference of an area by hanging on to the walls, furniture, appliances, cupboards, etc. He especially gets around the bathroom pretty quickly, and when one of us is taking a shower, we can tell when he's up to something when it gets all quiet. Here's what Collin found early one morning:

A few crawling videos, as promised. They're a little old though, so not quite his fastest speed to date.

In other news, Davy has two new teeth slowly making their way out on his top gums. He won't quite let us get pictures of them yet, so y'all will have to wait.

Penn Videos

Here's a few cute videos of Davy playing in the hotel and showing off a few new-found skills.

And here's the video from Valley Forge that Rachel promised.

Pennsylvania

Collin's been working in Pennsylvania the last two weeks (he comes home today--yay!) and last weekend Davy and I drove down to visit him and see some sites. We had a fabulous time. Davy was great in the car (it helped that I was driving at night, so he slept most of the way). He actually slept really well at the hotel, too, which was nice for everyone! Friday, while Collin was still working, Davy and I explored Walmart (we don't really have a Walmart in MA--which I'm not complaining about as I wouldn't go there often anyway) and our hotel room. Davy was thrilled to have new furniture to walk along. He's got this new tongue thing going. Cute, if really silly.


Waving "hi" to the camera, and checking himself out in the mirror.


Then we picked up Collin from work and drove through the gorgeous countryside to visit a cross-stitch store Collin had so sweetly found for me. We drove past so many rolling hills with big bales of hay, that were just too tempting. So we stopped, propped our camera up on a bale of hay, and took one of our best family pictures of the year. Surprise!



Saturday we went into Philly to the Franklin Institute, which is a really cool science museum. We followed the path of blood through the famous model of a heart and then watched a sheep's heart being dissected live. The ew factor was definitely a plus, as it got everyone's attention. We also visited the moon and had a "train ride" on an old steamer. Then we had lunch at a fantastic Turkish restaurant. Yummy.


Sunday was an unseasonably warm day, and we enjoyed it fully, along with everybody and their dog (literally) at Valley Forge. We walked through the park and saw some deer up close. We got a cute video of Davy talking to them that we'll have to post later, with Collin's computer.

Laundry and Chair Walking

Davy's really going strong on the standing up thing. Before today Davy had only whined until we helped prop him up against something. And he had stood up by himself in the bathtub, but that wasn't an activity I wanted to encourage yet, so I made him sit back down. But just today he finally got the pulling himself up on something (me--three times!) for real. I foresee a lot more pulling up on furniture in the near future. Here he is helping with the laundry--it really was helping, too, because he was actually happy for the whole time I was folding three loads!


Davy's also got the idea of transferring from object to object. He can move quite well from the couch to the table, to the wall to the book shelf to the other chair and back, now. He's taken some tumbles, of course. I never cease to be amazed what impact the human head can bear and still keep everything inside where it's supposed to be. It's really exciting to watch Davy's excitement. People keep warning me about when Davy can walk and how I'll never have a quiet moment again, but right now I'm loving watching Davy's progress, and I can't help feeling like it will be nice for my back when he can follow me from room to room instead of being carried all over.

Davy is also absolutely adorable with his "kisses" for friends and Mom. (So far Dad doesn't get that preferential treatment, but he does get the best laughs!) At our friend's Halloween donut party there was another baby boy born just two days before Davy, playing on the same little play table with his dad. Davy started scooting himself closer and closer, then bent over and gave him a slobbery, wide-open mouth kiss on the neck. It was really sweet and funny to all the adults watching, but the poor kid got this look on his face, like, "What's he doing? Daddy, save me!" He is becoming quite the mimic, too, with certain sounds. If I start clucking my tongue, Davy will smile with recognition and start making the sound, too. There are a few other sounds he can copy, and we have fun making a little game of it.



Davy and Daddy hanging out in the car while I run an errand. Luckily he hasn't found the horn yet.

Halloween

Happy Halloween! Can you believe Halloween is over already? Davy enjoyed his first candy and costume holiday. He thought the doorbell ringing every few minutes and all the kids coming to the door was pretty cool. And the candy bowl was so exciting. Collin let him have a little taste of a sucker (I was not too happy about that), and Davy was thrilled. Plus all the candy wrappers crinkle so satisfyingly. Davy's just figured out the whole in-and-out thing (at least the taking things out--putting them in is a little harder) and loved reaching in the pumpkin bowl over and over.





Last Saturday night was our ward's Primary Halloween party and trunk-or-treat. The party was fantastic--great treats, activities, and costumes. Collin was such a sport to put on the costume I made for him. I had decided that we were going as the Veggie Tales characters, Bob the Tomato, Larry the Cucumber, and Gordon the Gourd Pumpkin. We made up the "Gordon" character, because a friend loaned us the pumpkin costume for Davy and all we had to do was add eyes. We had several compliments about our costume idea and homemade costumes, which was quite flattering. And apparently Collin is now infamous at Deloitte for the Larry the Cucumber costume, even though no one's seen a picture (and won't if Collin has anything to say about it).




Davy getting his face painted at the party. He wouldn't hold still!